Easter Weekend

Saturday was the Easter Egg Hunt at Northridge Park.

Claire taking her picture with the Easter Bunny

Waiting for the hunt to begin

Later that evening we decorated our eggs

Claire ready to start


Checking out the finished product

On Sunday we enjoyed a beautiful day in Colorado with an outdoor service and then dinner at the Gibbons

Family Photo


Claire and Uncle John


Sparky showing off his new haircut

pH Probe

Since Claire was an infant she has been treated for Reflux. Typically this is something that a child will outgrow by the time they are one year of age. For Claire however every trial off her medication has shown that she has yet to outgrow the reflux so we recently visited a GI specialist at the Children's Hospital Colorado for further evaluation. Dr. Kramer agreed that this should have resolved by this age and recommended additional studies to determine if this really was reflux or something else that would benefit from other management.

The first of these studies was a 24 hour pH probe which was performed during an inpatient stay at the Children's Hospital Colorado. The goal of the study was to see if she was refluxing and they did that by placing a probe through her nose into her esophagus. Claire was a champ - doing all that was asked of her by the nurses right up until they placed the probe. Her immediate reaction was to pull it out and she almost succeed before they were able to stop her. She then had to wear no-no's which make it so that she was not able to bend her elbows therefore could not reach the tube. Off to x-ray we went to make sure that the probe was in place, by the time we returned to the procedure center to await the reading of the x-ray Claire figured out how to swipe the tube with her arms straight and almost got the tube out before they were able to secure it in place with some high strength tape. After confirming the position Claire was able to have some milk and sadly cry herself to sleep. The good news for her (and us) was once she woke up she was in a good mood and left the tube alone. We were then able to take off the no-nos and explore the hospital and visit with some of Mommy's co-workers. Claire proceeded to actually enjoy her hospital stay, marching around like she owned the placed, playing with her new toys that she received from Mommy, Daddy and Grandma Gibbons and playing in the playroom that a wonderful volunteer opened up in the evening.

Sleeping in the hospital bed with the little black bag that recorded all the data and hanging out watching Toy Story on the tv.

We are still awaiting the results from the probe study and hope to hear something this week. The next test in line is the Upper GI study. Hopefully we'll get this little problem figured out soon without having to move onto the more invasive tests like the endoscopy.

Updated 4/22/12- unfortunately the probe did not record any usable data, so we are heading back in on 4/25/12 to have an endoscopy and the probe placed again. Hopefully we will have a better outcome this time around.

Potty Training

While Melissa was away at the MDA Conference in Las Vegas, Claire decided that she was going to start using the potty full time. With Dave's help Claire became very confident in her ability to wear underoos and go potty on her duck potty. Unfortunately this new desire to use the potty did not extend to school and therefore we were in limbo with the potty. It seemed that the problem at school was with the potty so we set out the following weekend to expose Claire to other potties so that she could become more comfortable with non-duck potties. We bucked the traditional wisdom of staying home and headed out on the town. Claire did awesome using the potty at tumbling, at the historical museum, and the SMA Gala that we attended. She was very proud of her new skill and would announce that she "went pee" loudly and proudly to anyone who would listen. We ran into some problems the next day when the car ride to the zoo was just a little to long, but overall it was a pretty successful weekend with only two accidents. This method proved successful as Claire began to be more comfortable with the potties at school and we are moving closer to having a full potty trained little girl. Now the challenge is being able to quickly locate the nearest bathroom at every request to use the potty, which is more frequently than we ever anticipated.
Update- As of the end of March Claire was completely potty trained- quite excited for our big girl!

Claire singing Baa Baa Black Sheep

Claire at 26 months

We have been falling behind in our post about the happenings of Claire (and her parents). It has been a busy few months for us as we learn to keep pace with a two year old. Claire is such a joy and it is fascinating to watch her learn new things minute by minute. As this doubles as our baby book for Claire we wanted to take time to note what Claire is doing at age two.

At her two year checkup (12/2011): Claire weighed in at 21 lbs 15 oz (2.59% of the CDC charts), height was 2 feet 10 inches (55.19% on the CDC charts), and her head was at 19.02 inches (71.82% on the CDC charts)

• Claire talks in full sentences now and we are working on using all of our nice words to express our needs instead of demanding that something is done. It is great to hear things like " I love you", but not so great to hear things like "I no love you, I love Sparky". As with any two year old Claire has said some funny things that make you pause and wonder where she heard that from, one of our favorites was "That's what I'm talking about",


• Claire can identify all of her capital letters and can sing her ABC's


• Claire can count to 10


• Claire knows her colors, and loves the color purple and insist on wearing it head to toe


• Claire is learning her shapes


• Claire loves to sing and can belt it out, among her favorites are: "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star", "Baa Baa Black Sheep", "Wheels on the Bus", "Itsy Bitsy Spider", "Bumblebee" and her songs from school and tumbling.


• Claire continues to love books and has memorized some of the books so that she can "read" them with us. Her favorite book right now is Johnny Lion and his Rubber Boots- which happened to be a childhood favorite of her Daddy. It is such a treat to have her jump in on parts while you are reading or to have her read it to you from her bed.

• Claire pulled out her stridor bike this weekend and was riding it all over the house, the few inches she grew this year gave her the height to ride it on her own. We can't wait to take her to the park for some bike riding this summer


• Claire continues to enjoy her art, she likes to use stickers, color, paint, and recently has begun to enjoy the use of scissors and loves to cut things


• Claire loves to help us in the kitchen and cook. She has the recipe for scrambled eggs with cheese down and enjoys walking us through what to do. She is always up for cooking us something in her play kitchen.


• Claire loves to play teacher and we are often asked to get on the carpet so we can do music class, or go through the picture cards. It is an interesting way to find out how school went that day as she recreates things that happened that day.


• Claire is learning to dress and undress herself. So far socks, shoes, and pants have been achieved. It is fun to watch how proud she is when she can get dressed or undressed without her mommy and daddy.


• Claire and Sparky continue to get on really well. Claire adores him and loves to give him hugs, throw his ball and fill up his food dish. Sparky may not have this same strong desire to be hugged all the time, but he tolerates it well.


• Claire continues to enjoy tumbling class on Saturdays and is getting more confident with her skills.

• Claire enjoys going to the Wings over the Rockies Airplane Museum, the Zoo, the Science Museum, and to various musical events.

• We finally caved and let Claire watch a little bit of TV and she enjoys Superwhy and Wild Animal Baby Adventures. Her favorite (and only movie) is Toy Story.

• We are currently breaking 5 teeth through so our grand total of teeth is at 14 teeth

• Over the year we moved through the young toddler and early preschool preschool 1 rooms at Primrose and we start in the early preschool 2 this week!

Happy Holidays

Claire's 3rd Christmas was lots of fun as she is starting to understand that the those gifts under the tree are for her and that Santa (whom she recognizes in pictures) brought her some of them.

Opening her stocking

Enjoying the easel that Santa brought her

Cuddling with Sparky

We celebrated New Years up in the Mountains, enjoying some time outdoors, exploring the chocolate village at Keystone and taking in some of the celebrations at Copper Mountain.

Sledding on the limited snow that was in the mountains

Claire's Tumbles Into Two

For Claire's 2nd Birthday we had a tumbling party at the local recreation center where Claire takes her weekly tumbling class. We were fortunate that Miss Sarah, her tumbling teacher, was able to host her party. Mrs. Sarah did a great job incorporating some of Claire's favorite activities including Ring Around the Rosie, Wheels on the Bus, the Parachute, Open Play Time and Music Time! Thanks to all our friends and family who made it a great celebration and brought toys to donate to Toys for Tots!

The kids playing with the parachute

Claire showing off her bar skills

Music time

Claire and her 100% edible tumbling room cake